An epic naval battle of amazing proportions! “Amazing” being miniature and “epic” being, well, let’s just say we had to wear eye goggles. Really! The incredibly talented seamen hand-crafted the robotic warships and controlled them from the side of Maker Faire ocean with radio remote controls, shooting 1/4″ diameter steel balls from their ships’ torpedo tubes. The ship models are replicas mostly from World War II, but one brave soul brought out his tiny pirate vessel. The battle known as Axis vs. Allies, meaning that all the ships had at some point in history fought for either side, in World War I or II. Founded in 1986, Western Warship Combat Club puts on all kinds of events, as we learned from Dan Rygasewicz, a founder. Dan also said that if you have ever put a firecracker in a toy boat in your bathtub, you will know exactly why playing with toy boats in the water is so mesmerizing.

Episode links: Western Warship Combat Club, Maker Faire

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

Travel with us back in time, back to Victorian days when men wore corsets, ladies wrote letters and the computers were steam-powered. What?? That’s right! Steampunk takes you back to a past that never was, and flies you in a dirigible to a future that will never be. What is steampunk? Take a look and find out!

Episode links: Steampunk [wikipedia], Steampunk Airmail Letter Project, Artist Suzanne Forbes, Maker Faire

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

The GETV crew ran into Utilikilt clad Alex Peake at Maker Faire because of a rumor that he was making Tactical Corsets! With beautiful model at the ready, Irina and Alex unzip the mysteries of this military grade corset. What’s a tactical corset you ask? Here’s how TacticalCorsets.com describes them:

Tactical Corsets are high-fashion, high-function clothes for empowered women! For too long, women have had to compromise practicality for beauty. Men got pants with cargo pockets and built-in knee pads, women got clothes whose only built-in feature was cuteness. But why should men get all the high-speed low-drag tactical toys? Tactical Corsets bring female operators MILSPEC features like MOLLE modular pouch attachment webbing and self-adjustable quick-release buckles in a load-bearing carrier designed to support the female form.

(Thanks to our guest editor, Wilfred Galila, who is hovering above the thin line between good and evil and in constant pursuit for the understanding of the human condition and man’s place in the cosmos.)

Episode links: Tactical Corsets, Alex Peake, Artist Suzanne Forbes, Cimmerians

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

Luke Jackson is a Canadian musician who recently collaborated with animator Murray John to create this music video, using stop motion photography and 2-D animation, for Luke’s song “Goodbye London”. Here’s what Luke has to say about the video’s production:

As far as the video itself is concerned, I approached London-based animator Murray John with the idea of creating a video that highlighted the bittersweet sentiment of the song’s lyric. I suggested that some of the video be very literal interpretation of the lyric, but that he should feel free to depart from that at will, which I think he did beautifully. He came up with the photo/animation idea as well as the characters and drafted a rough storyboard, most of which wound up in the finished piece. All the stop motion photos were taken around London, and Murray added the drawn 2-D animation using After Effects. There’s no actual video at all…it’s all photos. We never met each other until the video was almost finished, it was all done via email correspondence. I was in London on a family visit in May and he shot the photos of me for the start of the second verse.

Episode links: Luke Jackson, Murray John, “Goodbye London” (YouTube)

Formats: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

You’ve heard this one before. Big faceless corporate giant who makes adorable product goes after small-time fanboy who loves adorable product. In this case, it’s the PEZ Candy Company suing Gary Doss, the owner and curator of a museum of PEZ memorabilia. Gary has run the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia for 14 years and this isn’t the first time evil faceless PEZ has tried to shut him down. PEZ’s latest demand includes the destruction of Gary’s adorable oversized snowman dispenser of PEZ that you’ll see in this video.

Our tour of Gary’s museum of PEZ was shot 2 years ago, long before his current legal situation, so we’re rerunning it. Irina and iJustine, who happened to be in town then, take you on a tour of the amazing, wonderful and hopefully, longer lived Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.

Episode links: Burlingame Museum of PEZ (david), PEZ Candy Company (goliath), Boston Herald: Co. sues Pez ‘museum’, San Jose Merc News: All we are saying is, give Pez a chance, iJustine

Formats: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

Irina met Kevin Moore on Flickr a while back, swooning over a photo of his black kitty kat. Little did she know this geek was a specialist in a different kind of kitty! Turns out Kevin shoots, directs and edits adult movies. Who knew! With his nerdy background as a Unix admin, a wrangler of college intranet tubes for his buddies gaming pleasures, a WoW and Quake player, and a committed boyfriend to Nina — his one-time attention seeking girlfriend who let him take photos of her and charge cash money for letting other dudes see her nekkid! So, when we ran into Kevin back in Jan at the Adult Entertainment Expo, Irina sat him down for a dorky session of chit chat. Enjoy!

Episode links: Kevin Moore, Kevin’s Flickr Pix, AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Serenity left a giant indelible mark in the wild west of modern science fiction, leaving rabid fans wanting more, much more. Rather than wait for Fox or NBC to come around and maybe give fans what they crave, some fans have taken it upon themselves to extend the Firefly story themselves. Browncoats: Redemption is not your typical fan flick. This one has a compelling story, a tight script, elaborate well lit sets, actors who know how to act, all shot on RED cameras and to top it all off, for charity! Well into principal production, Redemption is looking a lot like what die hard fans have been clamoring for. Joss Whedon has reportedly given the production his thumbs up, with some of his and Serenity/Firefly cast members’ charities standing to benefit.

Scott Stead, GETV Field Contributor in Washington, DC, visits the Redemption set during principal shooting and speaks with creators/producers Steven J. Fisher and Michael C. Dougherty as well as several of the film’s cast members.

Episode links: Browncoats:Redemption, Scott Stead, Serenity, Firefly, Joss Whedon

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

When our pal Kevin Smokler slid us the opportunity to interview one of the legendary thinkers and writers of the geekosphere, we pounced on the chance. Chris Anderson resuscitated Wired magazine back from the brink of the geek deadpool and is notable for coining the term The Long Tail, which he penned a book on. Chris is about to release his second book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which is already generating controversy on a couple of fronts.

One never to rest, Chris also recently launched BookTour.com, a site for authors to more easily line up and promote their book tours and for fans to easily find and meet up with their favorite authors. Chris, like us, is also a big fan of ‘maker’ culture and is busy building drone airplanes based on open source hardware. A subject we’ll save for another episode.

Episode links: Chris Anderson, The Long Tail blog, Wired, BookTour, Free: The Future of the Radical Price, DIY Drones, Ning, VQR (criticism)

Formats: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

Which comes first, the music or the video? The question is moot now that artisan Ben Lewry of Visionary Instruments, has built an LCD video display into his guitar. After several prototypes, his custom video guitars now can run visualizations or movies by simply popping in a USB thumbdrive into a back panel. Visualizations can even be triggered with MIDI signals by playing the guitar. Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree, was so taken by Ben’s designs that he’s now rocking a video guitar to sold out shows around the world.

Episode links: Visionary Instruments, Porcupine Tree, Diane Nitschke [photos], Maker Faire

Format: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)

It’s true. The future is here. Really. Anything you can dream in 3D can be made real. MakerBot’s affordable Cupcake CNC, a slightly larger than a breadbox 3D printer, will take your 3D modeled dreams and make them manifest. MakerBot’s Bre Pettis, a man who knows how a lot about making robots and dreams come true, gives Irina the skinny on what MakerBot is and how it works.

Episode links: MakerBot, Bre Pettis, Thingiverse, Google SketchUp, Blender, Forkbot, Martha Vader, Maker Faire 2009

Formats: iPod/iPhone (.m4v)